1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to a musical teaching device which substantially shortens the amount of time which a student requires in order to understand various aspects of playing a stringed instrument.
2. Description of Prior Art
Many people, at some point in their life, exhibit a desire to learn to play a musical instrument. A substantial number of these people will then obtain a suitable instrument and seek out requisite musical instruction.
Of all the instruments currently available, one of the most popular is the guitar. An individual plays the guitar by setting various strings vibrating with one hand while positioning the other hand on the fingerboard to change pitches (notes) to produce desired sounds. The guitar is held with the strings facing outwardly from the player. Consequently, while an individual plays a guitar he cannot easily see the strings and frets which lie along the neck of the instrument. This difficulty to visually perceive which strings are being depressed against a fret, and the particular frets against which the strings are being depressed forces the player to rely more on his senses of hearing and touch than on his sense of vision. This consequent lack of visual feedback significantly lengthens the time needed to understand the playing of the guitar. And this, in turn, makes the guitar one of the more difficult instruments to learn.
Various solutions aimed at providing visual feedback and thereby shortening the time required to learn the guitar have been proposed in the art. However, each possesses one or more serious drawbacks which limit its effectiveness for expediting a student's development of the various skills needed to play the guitar.
Specifically, U.S. Pat. No. 830,915 (issued Sept. 11, 1906 to J. W. Myers) describes a teaching device in particular, a chart, comprised of a sequence of single musical notes placed along a staff and a separate sketch or photograph of the actual fingering needed to play each note. Each photograph is appropriately placed on the chart so as to correspond to the proper note. As a result, the information conveyed to the student is limited to single-note fingering. Thus, this device does not substantially aid the student in learning other fundamental, though slightly more complicated, aspects of playing the instrument, e.g., chords, scales, and the like.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,300,193 (issued Apr. 8, 1919 to C. D. Raff) and 4,295,406 (issued Oct. 20, 1981 to L. C. Smith) also disclose devices which basically show single-note fingering and thus possess the same drawbacks as the device disclosed in the '915 patent. Specifically, in the '193 patent, one or more moveable slides are enclosed in a case. Each slide has imprinted on it the letters of the notes comprising a musical scale. Cut-outs are placed on a surface of the case thereby permitting the student to move each slide and see through the cut-outs the proper fingering position for each note of the selected scale. In the '406 patent, an electronic device is shown which has a plurality of switches, each marked with a musical note, and arranged on a treble staff, such that the position of each switch, as viewed by the student, corresponds to the proper position of the associated note on the staff. Whenever the student depresses a switch, the proper fingering is dislayed through the illumination of various indicators appropriately positioned as a fingerboard-like representation.
Teaching devices, known to the art, which can teach chord fingering are typified by the apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,403,590 (issued Oct. 1, 1968 to B. Quinton); 3,758,698 (issued Sept. 11, 1973 to J. F. Matyas), and 4,257,306 (issued Mar. 24, 1981 to D. Laflamme). Specifically, the '590 patent shows a fingerboard having simulated strings with the space between various frets and strings marked with a letter identifying the note produced if a string was depressed against the fret at that position and picked. The notes comprising each major chord are given on a chart located at the rear of the fingerboard. The student can then refer to the chart to determine the notes comprising a chord and can then position his fingers accordingly. Unfortunately, this device does not display the fingering for the student to view but rather relies on the student's ability given the proper notes of a chord to correctly position his fingers on the fingerboard. Consequently, if the student's fingering is wrong, this device disadvantageously will not provide the correct fingering. Moreover, this device is limited to showing the fingering of only one chord at a time. Thus, this device and others--described hereinbelow--like it are all incapable of showing transitions in fingering, i.e., the movement of each finger when shifting from one chord to another. Since chord changes form the core of much of the guitarists' responsibility, information regarding proper finger transitions is extremely important to the student. Unfortunately, the student is often left to acquire proper finger transitions solely from years of playing experience. Consequently, this disadvantageously lengthens the period of time which the student requires to learn the instrument.
The device shown in the '698 patent is comprised of a series of slides in which each can be moved in a case that has a top surface resembling a fingerboard and more specifically has a cut-out in each possible finger position. Each slide corresponds to a string and can be positioned to show the single-note fingering occurring all along the string. By moving all the slides, the fingering for any given chord can be shown. However, this device, like that described in the '590 patent, is capable of displaying the fingering of only one chord at a time. Lastly, the electronic device described in the '306 patent possesses similar limitations.
Another approach taken in the art is typified by that shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,978,757 (issued Sept. 7, 1976 to W. T. Johnson, Jr., et al). Here, a device is described in which the proper fingering for any chord or note is indicated by illuminated lamps, appearing on a fingerboard display and/or on a chord diagram, in positions corresponding to the proper fingering. Yet, this device is only capable of displaying fingering associated with one chord at a time. Moreover, this device is relatively expensive to build and cumbersome to use.
A further approach is typified by the apparatus described in U.S. Pat. No. 1,821,516 (issued Sept. 1, 1931 to M. B. Hohn). There, each one of four rigid rods is used to represent a corresponding string of a violin. Four consecutively numbered markers can be slid along each rod. A chart which shows the fingering for a desired musical scale can be placed behind the rods such that the fingering is visible to the student. The markers can then be slid into positions to correspond to the fingering needed to play any note in that scale. Unfortunately, this device is also unable to show chords. In addition, the inability to change the ordering of the markers on each rod limits the usefulness of the device as an educational tool. Moreover, the need to insert a chart renders the device cumbersome to use.
Lastly, U.S. Pat. No. 3,245,303 (issued Apr. 12, 1966 to R. O. Patt) describes a further type of musical teaching device known to the art. In this device, a transaprent sheet, i.e., an overlay, has a plurality of grid-like fingerboard representations drawn on it. This overlay is placed over a sheet which has a plurality of encircled numbers drawn on it. Each number corresponds to one of the four playing fingers of the left hand and all the numbers represent the fingering position for all the chords comprising a major chord type. When the overlay is appropriately positioned over the sheet, the fingering for any given chord in any desired voicing, or key, can be displayed. The key can be changed by vertically moving either the sheet or the overlay with respect to the other. However, the usefulness of this device is limited because only those chords of any one major type, e.g., a major sixth, are visibly depicted on any one sheet and are thus visible to the student only one at a time. Consequently, this device does not readily permit the fingering for two or more chords of two or more different types to be displayed simultaneously, and therefore, disadvantageously limits the amount of information that can be presented to the student. This, in turn, disadvantageously does not appreciably shorten the time required by the student to learn the instrument.
Thus, as can be readily appreciated from the foregoing, each device known in the art and, particularly those discussed hereinabove, is aimed at displaying only one fundamental aspect of the instrument, e.g., fingering of a note or chord. However, playing the guitar--or any stringed instrument--requires the mastery of many fundamental aspects, such as but not limited to: fingering notes, scales and chords; efficient fingering transitions between different notes, scales and chords; harmonic inter-relationships between the notes comprising any given scale or chord (including mode changes); counterpoint (including contrary motion), rhythm and accents. Moreover, each such aspect is not unique into itself but is highly related to the others. As such, knowledge of all these relationships is necessary for mastery of the instrument. Since each prior art teaching device is only aimed at essentially one fundamental aspect, the amount of information which it is capable of conveying to the student, in relation to that which the student needs to know to master the instrument, is rather small. Thus, none of these devices appreciably shortens the amount of time which the student requires to learn and master the instrument.
In addition, many of the devices known to the art--of which some of those discussed hereinabove are illustrative--are complex to use and thus counter-productive to the student. Specifically, the student, in order to use any such device, is burdened with having to spend substantial amounts of time learning to use the teaching device itself. During this time, the student is temporarily distracted from learning to play the instrument, and thus feels as though he is making little, if any, progress towards achieving that goal. As a result, the student becomes frustrated. If the device is too difficult to learn and use, the student's frustration may well increase to a point where he will abandon his goal of learning to play the instrument.